ELEVEN YEARS after mentally ill inmates won a class-action lawsuit against the state, plans have been announced for new psychiatric facilities at four prisons throughout California.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has asked the Legislature for $37.8 million in initial funds to begin building mental health and psychiatric centers.

The Legislature should act quickly to approve this financing.

The plan, which eventually could cost $593 million over five years, is in response to a 1995 federal court order to upgrade the level of mental health services, finding that deficiencies in our prison system often expose mentally ill inmates to an “intolerable risk of harm.”

That finding is one of several rulings by federal courts mandating California’s prison system to correct dangerous inadequacies. Two other such areas are medical care and treatment and facilities for juveniles.

Most of the initial spending goes to Folsom State Prison, but facilities in Corona, Soledad and Vacaville will also receive funds. The money will provide more beds and staff to treat inmates with mental disorders — a prison population that Scott Kernan, the warden at New Folsom, said is expected to double by the time construction is completed in 2011.

In 1996, 8 percent of the state prison population required intense psychiatric treatment. Today, it’s 20 percent of 170,000 prisoners.

There are only about 100 beds on two sites for such care. The construction is expected to add 700 beds.

“This is really the first effort … to try to get these needed mental health facilities built,” said Kernan, who is the action liaison with the CDCR.

Michael Bien, one of the attorneys who filed the class-action suit, said, “We’ve been fighting for this for about 10 or 15 years. This need has been clear for years and years and years. People are literally dying because they don’t have enough beds.”

Critics say efforts to implement a plan should have started sooner. Given the rapid growth with inmates needing such care, and the 11 years that lapsed since the court order was issued, they are absolutely right.

The inmates who will be housed in these new facilities have serious mental disorders and pose a danger to themselves and other inmates. It is about time the state met its responsibility.

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